Portrait of the Murder Drone Pilot as a Suburban Psychopath
The NYT wants this to seem cool. The guy at his computer workstation waiting for women and children to leave his target so he can murder him from afar (and any men nearby, who will per DoD regulations be labeled insurgents after the fact, no matter what they did or how much they loved America). But it's monstrous.
Drone Pilots, Waiting for a Kill Shot 7,000 Miles Away - NYTimes.com
HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y. — From his computer console here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going about their daily lives 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Sometimes he and his team watch the same family compound for weeks.
“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Colonel Brenton said.
When the call comes for him to fire a missile and kill a militant — and only, Colonel Brenton said, when the women and children are not around — the hair on the back of his neck stands up, just as it did when he used to line up targets in his F-16 fighter jet.
Afterward, just like the old days, he compartmentalizes. “I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,” he said. “I have a duty, and I execute the duty.”
Drones are not only revolutionizing American warfare but are also changing in profound ways the lives of the people who fly them.
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